Goods vehicle operators licence allows a person or an organisation to operate passenger carrying vehicles in return for any hire or reward. Generally, you will need an operator licence if you want to use a vehicle over 3.5 tonnes or 3500 kg plated weight to carry goods in conjunction with a trade or business.
The licence is required whether or not good carriage is for hiring or rewarding. However, the main purpose of good vehicle operator licencing is to ensure safety, ensure the proper usage of good vehicles, and protect the environment. The operator’s licence should be applied for; in the name of that person, company or partnership who is the user of that particular vehicle.
Types Of Standard Licence
There are many types of licence. But the main two types of licence are a standard licence and the other one is a restricted licence.
Standard Licence
A standard licence is a permission from a competent authority. It is an official document that permits a specific individual to operate one or more motorised vehicles, such as motorbikes, cars, trucks etc.
The standard licence also has two types. The first one is the standard national licence, and the other one is a standard international licence.
Standard National Licence
A standard national licence generally allows you to carry your goods on your account or sometimes other people’s goods for hire or reward in Great Britain and to carry your goods on your account abroad.
Standard International Licence
A standard international licence means you can carry your goods and other people’s goods, both in the UK and on international journeys. After getting a standard international licence, you can also request a UK Licence for the community.
Restricted Operator’s Licence
This licence is held by companies, institutions, or organisations that are not engaged in hire or reward haulage and are carrying their goods for distribution or trade purposes. Unlike standard national and international licences, there is no requirement to hold a CPC (Certificate of Professional Competence) with a restricted licence.
Applying For A Goods Vehicle Operators Licence
You should apply for your Operator Licence at least nine weeks before the date when the licence is needed. This allows time for the Traffic Commissioner to make any enquiries thought to be required. In straightforward cases, a licence should be issued within those nine weeks.
There are a few points given on applying for an operators licence.
- To apply for a new licence you need to complete Form GV79. This form is available from the VOSA Contact Centre, Tel 0300 123 9000. We can also email you the GV79 forms, along with some handy information that might help you find the vehicle you need.
- With the relevant application fee, the completed form must be sent to the Traffic Area in whose area you have an operating centre.
- You will also need to advertise your application in a local newspaper circulating in each place where you are applying to have an operating centre. This gives anyone owning or occupying buildings or land in the vicinity of the operating centre an opportunity to make a representation against your application on environmental grounds.
- Your GV79 application form contains a blank advertisement form and tells you how to fill it in. You can choose the size of the advertisement yourself, but it must be big enough to be easily read.
- The advertisement must appear at least once within the period running from 21 days before to 21 days after you make your application. Tear out the whole newspaper page showing your advertisement and send it straight away to the Traffic Commissioner. The page sent should contain the date and name of the paper.
Role Of A “Traffic Commissioner” For Getting A Goods Vehicle Operators Licence
Traffic commissioners are responsible for licencing and regulating those who generally operate heavy goods vehicles, buses, or coaches. They also manage the registration system of local bus services. Usually, they are assisted in this work by deputy traffic commissioners, who preside over several public inquiries.
However, to qualify for a goods vehicle operator’s licence (standard licence or restricted licence), you must satisfy a traffic commissioner that you have a good reputation and fitness to hold a licence.
Besides, you should meet the eligibility of appropriate financial standing, which means you have enough money to run your business and have enough suitable facilities or arrangements for maintaining the vehicles while ensuring that both you and your staff obey all the rules.
Anyways, for a standard licence, there are three other requirements, including the previously mentioned ones. Such as the applicant must be properly established in Great Britain, where a third party address cannot be used for correspondence on a standard licence. Besides, the applicant must have a transport manager that is of good repute and professionally competent. In addition to that, the licence holder must have “vehicle access”.
This means that the holder needs to own his vehicle or has a formal contract with a hire company, other operator or other organisation to hire one when needed. However, the licence holders are not required to own or lease a vehicle, such as seasonal works and things like that.
Software Licence Compliance
A licencing agreement is legally binding, and a software licence compliance means only using the software by the software developers conditions of usage. However, software ownership remains with the software developer and end-users licence a copy for private usage. Therefore a licence compliance management is a very important thing to be noted.
Compliance Audit
A compliance audit is generally an independent evaluation to ensure that an organisation is following external laws, rules, and regulations or internal guidelines. Usually, the board of directors are often also accountable for operations and need to see audit reports. However, a compliance audit is a review performed to ascertain an enterprise’s adherence to regulatory guidelines. Also, audit reports evaluate the strength and comprehensiveness of an organisation’s compliance preparations and security policies user access controls along with risk management procedures.
Transport managers
However, suppose you are planning to apply for a goods vehicle operators licence. In that case, you will need to have at least one transport manager who will be able to satisfy the requirements of good repute and professional competence. There are two types of transport manager, Internal and External.
Internal Transport Managers
Internal Transport Managers are closely connected with the Operator. To qualify as an Internal Transport Manager, they must be resident in a European Union Country. Besides, they need to effectively and continuously perform their transport manager role for the operator in question while having a genuine link to the operator, such as being a full-time or part-time employee, director or owner.
External Transport Managers
You can employ an external Transport Manager to work as a consultant on a contract or part-time basis if you do not fulfil the role of Transport Manager, for example, due to a lack of qualifications or are an owner driver or sole trader, or do not currently have an Internal Transport Manager.
The contractor must have effective and continuous management responsibility for the transport activities of the operator and might have a good reputation and be resident in a European Union country.
Besides, they should have a contract with the operator that specifies their transport manager’s tasks. In addition to that, they can only work for a maximum of four operators with a combined total fleet of 50 vehicles. Moreover, they must act solely in the operator’s interests and independently of transport customers.
Considering all these, if you still are interested in becoming a Transport Manager, several awarding and amazing institutions or organisations can provide the Transport Manager Certificate of Personal Competence (also known as CPC but not to be confused with Driver CPC!). There are no academic entry requirements for the examination. Neither are there any fixed rules or requirements for the study.
Operator Licence Compliance Audit
Operator Licence Compliance Audit is an agreement for the operator licence. When an operator’s licence has been granted, the DVSA can enter any premises named on an operator’s licence and inspect all large goods vehicles and all the management systems that the operator has in place.
Licence Undertaking and “Drivers Hours Rule”
These are the set of undertakings you will sign and agree to abide by when issues with your operator licence. But if you ignore doing so, this might make you fall in trouble. However, the driver hour rule puts a daily limit of 9 hours of driving between daily/ weekly rest periods. But sometimes this limit can be increased to a maximum of 10 hours driving in a day but only twice in one week.
In conclusion
For getting a goods vehicle operators licence, one needs to ensure the requirements and gather information about the types of the operator while ensuring required compliances. If one gets through all the procedures finely, they would be able to get the licence easily.